Last night, LB and I went to a Korean restaurant. One of the 반찬 (side dishes) was 오이 김치 (cucumber kimchi), which happens to be one of my favorites. I immediately scarfed down the entire dish, and then realized that LB might like to have some too.
So when the waitress came back, I asked her, in exactly these words: “Can we have some more 오이 김치, please?”
And she gave me the blank “am-I-supposed-to-understand-what-you-just-said?” look that I really should be used to by now.
“오이 김치,” I repeated. But the blank look continued.
“Cucumber,” LB told her helpfully.
“Ah, cucumber,” she responded. She smiled, and immediately took away the dish to go get more.
(For the record, I knew she spoke Korean because I had heard her speaking fluent Korean to other staff and customers only a few minutes before. Nope, this little Korean language FAIL is all due to my ultra-crappy pronunciation.)
*sigh*
3 responses so far ↓
Mei-Ling // May 8, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Hm, I’m not sure if this would apply to you, but sometimes when I am attempting to speak my would-be native tongue, I am frustrated that although I have an accent, I am even more frustrated that I can’t “hear” my own accent and therefore seek to correct it as best I can.
Do you ever experience that?
Sang-Shil // May 8, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Sometimes I can hear my own accent (or rather, my own bad pronunciation), and sometimes I can’t. It really seems to depend on the sound, word, or phrase. I can definitely hear it more now (i.e. after hearing a lot of spoken Korean, mostly from watching dramas ^^) than when I first started learning.
But even when I can hear it, it’s usually impossible to correct because my mouth simply can’t produce the sounds that I need it it produce.
If there was ever an argument for “forcing” kids to learn a language when they are young, then THIS IS IT. And since I’m not in the mood to argue this point with anyone right now, I’m closing this post to future comments.
Thanks.
Learning A Language « Land of the Not-So-Calm // May 12, 2009 at 3:51 pm
[...] De-Lurk Here! ← Korean Language FAIL [...]
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